'Not all that glitters is gold' - metallic pigments in a Victorian scrapbook

One of the items I treated this year was a late 19th Century
Victorian scrapbook. The scrapbook was made for a child and the
contents directly reflect this. It was filled with clippings from
magazines, stickers, poems that referenced children stories,
animals, and other imagery which might have appealed to a child at
the time. Additionally, it was filled with elaborate, original
artwork by the woman who created it.

Enter email address to subscribe

We will use this data to carry out our obligations arising from your enquiry or booking. For details of how we handle data please refer to our Privacy Statement.

As I examined the pages, I saw
something with which I was both familiar and unfamiliar.
Metallic-looking stickers. As someone who grew up with shiny,
metallic-looking stickers placed upon notebooks and most surfaces
between the ages of 4 and 15 years, I knew that these immediately
had a childlike appeal.

As a conservator who observes the materiality and history of
items, my first thought was "I want to know precisely what this
is." I observed that some of it seemed to have discolored, was
lost, or showed signs of corrosion. If this was a material that was
delicate or reactive to something in the book, I wanted to inform
my conservation decisions. I investigated the conservation report
created by a former student (I am the second student to take on
this item for treatment). In it, it was a picture of one of the
metallic decorations, but the caption below read "unknown
material".

Understanding the boom in printing technology during the 19th
century, I began to consider the types of metals available and how
they could have been adapted. I formed a hypothesis that copper was
possibly involved to form the warmer, gold tones and perhaps
pewter, an alloy once made from tin and lead, for the cooler,
silver tones. Searching throughout publications, I looked for
peer-reviewed articles and books regarding metallic stickers or
ephemera production during the Victorian era. Unfortunately, I was
not able to find a resource which gave insight into them. (If
someone reading has information regarding metallic pigments in the
19th century, please contact me below).

Considering I was looking for materials which are metals, I knew
there was a scientific instrument that could provide data on
precisely what metals were present, X-ray fluorescent (XRF)
spectrophotometer In brief, XRF is a type of analysis which is able
to identify the presence of certain elements in a material, without
having to invasively extract a sample from the item. The benefits
of West Dean's instrument are the portability and user-friendly
operation.

Thirteen pages with various metallic stickers were surveyed, as
well as the tooled cover of the album.

Particularly, I was looking for indications of copper in the
golden tones and lead in the silver tones. These would have been
common metals and easily available and possibly manipulated by the
rise in technology during this time.

For the majority of the golden toned stickers, copper was
identified as the prominent colorant element. There is the
possibility of the pigment being a copper alloy, such as brass, due
to the presence of zinc in most of readings. The silver toned
stickers contained lead as the prominent colorant element.

The above XRF peak spectra is from one of the golden toned
stickers in the album. Copper (Cu) labeled in blue, is noticeably
prominent among the other elements detected, which included zinc
(Zn) labeled in green.

Knowing that there are metallic copper pigments inside the book
that have started to discolor (or more precisely, corrode), allows
me to inform the client about what the original condition and
vibrancy of the pages might have been. The current dull browns
would have been warm reflective tones that would have added a
unique aesthetic quality.

With regards to treatment, I visually analyzed the stickers and
none showed signs of active corrosion. Since beginning this study,
I would like to pursue further research into metallic pigments and
possible treatment of them to inhibit prevent further
corrosion.